Pros:

Cons:

Since its inception, the Conflict series has struggled to rise above mediocrity, yet it keeps valiantly plugging on. With the latest game, Conflict: Global Terror, that dogged determination is starting to pay off. The series isn't out of the woods yet -- old problems remain -- yet the missions are more exciting, the graphics look better, and the enemy AI is smarter than in the last game, Conflict: Vietnam. There's more to enjoy this time around, but you'll still need to live with glaring problems.

Conflict: Global Terror puts you in the boots of an elite four-man counterterrorist team. In the lengthy campaign, you'll fight drug lords in Latin America, take on terrorists in Seoul, stop Sarin gas production in the former Soviet Union, and much more. You'll race through the jungle in a jeep, assault gun emplacements, raid sprawling bases, blast bad guys in a movie theater, gun down foes in a subway, fight through gloomy caves, and crawl through rubble-strewn streets.

More often than not, the missions are tense and action packed, filled with varied objectives. Missions tend to switch gears at just the right moment instead of letting ideas wear out their welcome, though a few missions do beat the same ideas into the ground with grueling repetition. One mission suffers from a particularly obnoxious problem: the framerate in parts of it inexplicably slow to an utter crawl, making it nearly unplayable. Radically lowering the graphics settings didn't help.

The developers also broke one of the cardinal rules of PC game design by limiting how many times you can save per mission. (The exact number depends on the difficulty setting.) Missions are uncommonly long and at times brutally difficult, throwing vast numbers of enemies at you, which makes limited saves doubly unacceptable.

To beat the missions, you'll need to master team management, which is part of the problem. You can directly control any of your soldiers at any time. Switching among your troops to take advantage of their weapon loadouts or tactical positions is a breeze. As you control one man, you can easily give simple group or individual orders, such as "follow me" or "embark" in a vehicle.

Serious problems start to arise, though, because of the A.I. Your men will occasionally get lost or ignore orders. They suffer from mediocre aim, slow reaction times, and a tendency to waste ammo. (How did they ever become elite counter-terrorists?) The game can descend into micromanagement hell when you have to shepherd your men around, heal them, give them items, order them in and out of vehicles, switch positions in vehicles, and so on ad nauseam. Any fun you were having is quickly wiped away. Enemy A.I. tends to be better. At times, bad guys will stupidly idle around or charge into your gunfire, but just as often they'll move from cover to cover and try to surround you.